The impact of information and communication technologies on the discourses and practices of democratic innovation

Resumen

Nowadays, the attention to citizen participation has increased because of the expansion of distrust in governments and the rise of anti-politics sentiments among the citizens. At the same time, the widespread access and usage of the Internet is leading a transformation of the interaction between citizens, public institutions, and governments. Although the discussions around the idea of participation as the central core of democracies is not a recent event, its interaction with new technological developments has not been fully comprehended yet. Moreover, while these discussions traditionally emanated from social sciences, they are blending in with other disciplines which sometimes hampers the understanding of participation, its evolution, and its normative precepts. Hence, the new challenges and practices that fuel participation need to be analyzed considering the numerous perspectives and backgrounds that intertwine in their development. Because of these reasons, the general aim of this thesis is to study how ICTs can transform political participation in numerous facets, particularly, the innovative digital participatory discourses and practices. Given the peculiarities of this object of study, this thesis encompasses two main goals that are addressed from different methodological perspectives. On the one hand, the first goal seeks to establish an understanding of novel concepts of citizen participation and to comprehend how different theories have evolved from the lenses of political theory. On the other hand, the second goal aims at unveiling how the usage of ICTs has shaped several genuine and innovative practices from an empirical standpoint. Regarding the first goal, this thesis starts with an exploration of how the concept of democratic innovations has been gaining prominence in recent years in a wide range of disciplines and illustrates its evolution and multidisciplinary character. The trends over time suggest a gradual increase in the diversity (heterogeneity) and intensity of the development of these practices, particularly at the local level. Besides, this discussion around the concept of democratic innovation exposes several normative precepts from diverse traditional models of democracy (namely, the minimum, participatory, deliberative, and direct democracy) that intertwine with the governance paradigm and the new discourses that seek for efficiency and the delivery of public services. With this, these results have sought to contribute to the conceptual discussions around democratic innovations and new discourses on citizen participation. Then, and to accomplish the second goal, this thesis delves into concrete participatory processes in which innovative practices and digital means encounter. The aim was to capture the diversity and heterogeneity of these experiences and to draw some conclusions about their strengths and weaknesses. First, this thesis investigates the functioning and deployment of digital participatory platforms, given their potential to jointly display different forms of participation (functionalities) on the same environment. After that, it explores two additional matters: the creation of novel strategies to improve participation and the potential that online participatory mechanisms could have in emergency situations on these platforms. In this line, this thesis provides new evidence regarding the functioning of online participatory processes and uncovers different relevant aspects and implications about the functioning of collaborative processes. Finally, it presents an analysis of a deliberative experience in a mixed format (online and face-to-face) as a special type of citizen participation. The results show that there is not strong evidence of generalities in the implementation of platforms with respect to relevant environmental factors; and that they focus on “consultation” and “direct participation” while the deliberative dimension tends to complement other functionalities. This orientation can undermine the effectiveness of citizen participation by favoring the dispersion of proposals and hindering community building. Hence, processes in participatory platforms could benefit from the application of strategies and development of social networks to build communities that can favor the co-creation of proposals with greater impact within a more deliberative framework. These aspects manifest in the dynamics of digital participatory processes (e.g., geographical scope or citizen engagement over time) and in the shared issues in the participants’ contributions. Interestingly, despite the scattering of contributions that tackle such shared issues, their analysis highlights traits that may be actionable for public institutions. Finally, the results regarding hybrid experiences point to consistent trends in the preference for face-to-face interactions, where participants show higher ratings of compliance with the procedural constraints of deliberation. In this direction, and to ensure the proper functioning of digital deliberation, it is necessary to provide participants with sufficient means (both material and skills). With all of this, this thesis contributes to the understanding of fundamental aspects such as the particularities and normative assumptions behind digital participation and citizens’ performance in novel environments, which are cornerstones to sustain engagement and participatory practices in the long term.